


Enough is Enough

by cjoycoolio, fairietailed



Series: Klance Parent AU [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, M/M, OC, Other, briefly, i think its happy at least, it's kathy's ma!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7543780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjoycoolio/pseuds/cjoycoolio, https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairietailed/pseuds/fairietailed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Go find that stupid kid with the mullet. Maybe he’ll be of some help.”</p><p>--</p><p>In which Lance is left alone to raise a child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set less than a year after Kathy is born, 8 years before Lance and Keith reunite.
> 
> \--
> 
> this chapter is cowritten by the lovely cjoycoolio!

“You can’t do this. She needs you!”

The brunette girl across the room continues packing up her things, not evening turning to look at him.  


“How could you do this? She’s your daughter!” Lance practically yells at her, tears threatening to fall. “Don’t you love me? Don’t you love her?”  


The girl tugs on the strap of her bag on her shoulder. She scoffs as she heads for the door. “Not anymore. She’s your problem, Lance”  


The baby’s wails can be heard from the bedroom as the door slams.  


“I gave up everything for you!” Lance cries, pulling at his hair as he bites back tears. “My job, my school, Ke-”  


The girl turns on him, blue eyes sharp and cold.  


“Don’t you dare, Lance.”  


“Brandi you can’t do this. You can’t leave us.”  


“I can and I will,” she says, hiking a suitcase up on her hip, kicking open the bedroom door and making her way to the stairs. “I’m not giving up on  _ my _ job and  _ my _ education for some... kid.”  


“She’s  _ your _ kid,” Lance says, following her down the stairs as the suitcase bumps down each step. It moves in time with his heartbeat, pounding in his ears as he panics. “She’s  _ our _ kid! You can’t leave me alone with her! I don’t know what to do! How am I supposed to raise her by myself?”  


“And you think I know what to do?” Brandi yells over her shoulder, pulling the suitcase to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. The baby’s screams reach them even from across the house. “I don’t care enough to deal with her. I don’t care enough about you.”  


Lance rears back, his heartbeat falling from his ears into the floor.  


“You don’t mean that.”  


Brandi scoffs, pulling open the front door and dragging her suitcase over the threshold.  


“Go find that stupid kid with the mullet. Maybe he’ll be of some help.”

* * *

“And she just left just like that?” Pidge asks, with a look of astonishment.  


Lance sighs and nods his head.  


Hunk carries the baby in his arms, stopping at the edge of the living room.

“I forgot how tiny she is. How could she leave such a cute little thing?” he says as he lifts Kathy in his arms and smiles at her. She giggles in response.  


“I guess I wasn’t enough. We weren’t enough. I just don’t know what to do now. I... I can’t raise her alone.”  


Pidge takes the baby from Hunk, moving to sit beside Lance on the couch. “Well good thing you’re not going to be alone.”  


Hunk smiles as he sits on the other side of Lance. “That’s right. You got us.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set 11 years after Kathy is born, 3 years after Lance and Keith reunite.
> 
> It's been 2 years since they've gotten married, and have adopted a son, Liam.

“To the beach!”

Kathy sits on Lance’s shoulders, covering his eyes with her right hand, pointing to the horizon. She and Lance share a battle cry, heading through the lobby of their hotel and out the automatic doors. Keith watches from the entrance to the elevator, laughing as he hikes Liam higher up on his hip.

“Papa’s running off,” he says, and Keith nods. “Don’t you think we should catch up?”

“He won’t make it far,” Keith says. Liam reaches out, swiping Keith’s bangs to the side, letting his hand rest on his cheek.

“You just can’t run that fast, can you Mama?”

“No I cannot,” Keith says, and sets off after his husband.

Turns out Lance could not, in fact, get very far. He’s waiting for Keith outside of the hotel, running from Kathy as she chases him around the planters on the sidewalk.

“Oh!” Lance slows down, pulling to a stop in front of Keith and kissing him. “I thought we’d lost you for a second there.”

“Just because  _ you _ can dead sprint a block and a half with a pre-teen on your back doesn’t mean that  _ I _ want to.”

Lance laughs, scooping Liam out of his arms as Kathy calls out to them from inside the planter in front of them, knee-deep in a rose bush.

“Are we going to the beach or not?”

“Yeah,” Keith says, pulling his sunhat farther over his face and grabbing Lance by the hand. “Get out of those bushes, yeah? I don’t want your legs all scratched up from the thorns.”

“Sorry.” Kathy climbs out of the bushes, shaking her leg and grabbing Lance’s spare hand. “Let’s go.”

“Lance?”

It’s all very sudden.

Keith’s jerked back half a step as Lance freezes, rooted to the spot as Kathy bumps into his side. Keith watches as he turns, face paling significantly.

“Brandi?”

The woman behind them is tall, slender with brown skin and the bluest eyes Keith has ever seen. Her hair’s pulled into a high ponytail, her sundress blowing in the breeze like something straight out of a movie.

She looks just like Kathy.

Lance takes a step back, looking as though he’s been slapped across the face. The woman takes a step forward, and Lance takes a subtle step sideways to cover Kathy a bit more. Her eyes flit from Kathy’s face to Lance’s, to the linked hands between Lance and Keith, to Liam resting on Keith’s hip. Her eyes widen, and she takes another half a step forward.

“Is that...”

Lance chokes a bit under his breath. Keith watches him carefully.

“Keith let’s go.”

He backs up another step, turning around and tugging on Kathy’s hand to pull her in front of him. The woman calls out again.

“Lance! Don’t you leave me here. Tell me!”

He walks a bit faster, Kathy having to break into a small jog to keep up.

“Lance, god dammit, is that  _ her?!” _

Keith stops this time, pulling them all to a halt. Kathy’s tugged backwards, falling into Lance’s side. Lance turns to look at Keith, and his heart nearly drops through the floor.

“What is she talking about?”

There are tears in Lance’s eyes, and his voice cracks as he answers. He doesn’t look away from Keith.

“Yeah, it’s her.”

The woman takes a hesitant step forward, reaching out to Kathy as if to touch her. Lance panics, taking another step back, jaw clenching.

“Don’t.”

Keith watches the back and forth, hiking Liam an inch higher on his waist. The woman’s eyes focus on him again, this time for a second longer. She turns back to Lance, a silent exchange passing between them, their expressions changing with every tilt of their heads. Confusion, anger, happiness, excitement, sadness and a desperation from the both of them that Keith doesn’t understand, but wants to, and he speaks up and says as much.

“Someone needs to tell me what’s going on right now.”

“Not now,” Lance says, anxiousness seeping into his tone. “Not with Kathy.”

“Is that what you named her?”

Keith’s head snaps to the woman, bangs falling into his eyes. Liam reaches out and brushes them away, but the gesture doesn’t bring him any comfort.

“What are you talking about?”

The woman doesn’t look away from Kathy. “So you never told him?”

“He knows what he needs to,” Lance says, his voice growing cold at the mention of Keith. “Don’t you dare bring yourself into this.”

“And you’ve adopted another one,” the woman continues, ghosting over Lance’s words. “That’s cute.”

“Stop.”

“No, really,” she says. She drops her hand. “Glad you could call him up after all.”

“I didn’t,” Lance says, a bit too quickly. He takes a half a step forward. Keith’s stomach lurches. The woman’s eyes move to Lance.

“What?”

“I didn’t,” Lance repeats. “I couldn’t.”

“And yet,” the woman gestures at Keith and Liam, “here we are.”

“11 years later,” Lance snaps. “8 before I even found him again. It was nearly 5 years before I even  _ considered _ seeing anyone else. So don’t make me out to be the bad guy.”

“Oh,” the woman says, sneering. “I suppose it’s me, then, instead of you?”

“Brandi, you  _ left _ .” Lance takes another step forward, letting Kathy linger behind Keith. “In what way are you  _ not _ the bad guy? You left, not even a year after our daughter was born. That’s not something that a good person does.”

Keith nearly throws up.

It hits him all at once -- the resemblance, the questions, the panic in Lance’s face-

_ After our daughter was born. _

Our _ daughter. _

He grips at the shoulder of Kathy’s shirt, pulling her closer.

“We’re leaving.”

He turns to pull them away, but Brandi stops them. “So I don’t even get to meet her?”

Lance opens his mouth to say something, but is cut off by Keith. He snaps, letting go of Kathy’s hand and rounding on the woman behind him.

“No, you don’t. Because no one as horrible as you deserves to even breathe the same  _ air _ as my daughter.”

Brandi’s eyes grow wide. “ _ Your _ daughter?”

“My daughter,” Keith says. “Not yours. You lost that right the second you left her.”

“You have no idea who I am,” Brandi says. “You don’t get to make that decision.”

“I know that you abandoned your daughter and the father of your child, and that’s enough for me.”

“You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

“And I don’t care,” Keith says. “It’s no excuse. Kathy will not see you unless she wants to. You get no say in that.”

“She’s  _ my _ daughter,” Brandi says, taking another step forward. She’s close now, and Keith can practically feel her breath on his face. “I gave birth to her. You’re someone that has no relation to her, no connection, no real parental rights. Try and stop me. Because legally, you can’t.”

Keith sees red.

“No.” Luckily Lance steps in, pushing Brandi back a bit by the shoulder, and Keith is able to breathe, and able to think rationally. He takes a step back. “But I can. And like Keith says, Kathy will only see you if she wants to.”

The woman is silent for a moment, the gaze she has set on Keith somehow uninterested yet full of rage -- like she could either walk away or throw a punch, and was trying to decide between the two.

“Fine,” she says eventually, and Lance lets out a breath of air beside Keith. “Then ask her.”

She pulls out a piece of paper and a pen from her purse, ripping off a corner and writing a number on the strip. She hands it to Lance.

“Call me here if she wants to meet.” She looks around Lance, meeting Keith’s eyes again. “Even after 11 years he still has the same mullet. Good to know that your taste hasn’t changed.”

She turns and walks away, both Keith and Lance too shocked to move.

* * *

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to. Of course you don’t. No one would ever try and make you, but no one would be mad if you wanted to.” Keith pulls his legs up onto the bed, sitting cross-legged beside Kathy. “Meeting your actual mom is a big thing. But whether or not you want to is up to you.”

“How am I even supposed to decide something like that?” Kathy asks, wiping at her eyes and letting her hands fall into her lap. She’s shaking. Keith wants to hug her, but isn’t sure if he should.

“You’re 11 now,” Keith says. “You’re old enough to make your own decisions, I think. At least with something like this.”

“Why?” Kathy asks, and she looks up at Keith. “What would you do?”

It’s silent for a moment, the ticks from the clock in the hotel room seeming to fill the empty space like a heartbeat.

Liam struggles to open a bag of chips from across the room, and the tension is broken.

“He can’t even open his own chips,” Kathy says, though she’s laughing as she wipes away tears. She lets out a sniff, sliding off of the bed and making her way to stand above a frustrated Liam, who’s sitting on the floor next to the window. She takes the bag of chips from his hand, opening it and handing it back to her brother. “He’s useless.”

“He’s 6,” Keith says, allowing himself to smile. “I don’t think you were able to properly open your own chips until you were almost 9.”

They laugh. Liam takes a bite of a chip. It’s silent for another minute.

Kathy’s voice cuts through the silence, small and worried as she stares down at Liam.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Does this mean I have to leave?”

Keith’s sure that if his heart breaks any more, there will be nothing left.

“Kathy... Kathy no. No, of course you don’t have to leave.”

He pushes himself off of the bed, walking across the room in two strides and sitting next to his children. Kathy falls into his lap, her legs draped over his knees as she buries her face in his chest while she cries.

“But she said that you don’t g-get a say. That sh-she wants to meet m-me. She said you don’t h-have any right to keep me. What if she tries t-to take m-me?”

Keith practically crushes her to his chest, choking back tears of his own.

“I won’t let her.”

Kathy nods, gripping the front of Keith’s shirt as she calms down. She pulls back a bit, wiping her cheeks, letting out a long sigh and straightening up. She frowns, though her bottom lip trembles, and she looks at Keith with fierce determination.

“I don’t want to see her.”

Keith nods.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” she says. “You’re my dad, and Papa’s my dad. And that lady... left. So if she didn’t want to know me, then I don’t think I want to know her, either.”

Keith nearly cries out of relief, but settles for hugging Kathy instead.

“I’m going to go tell your dad, alright? Stay here with your brother.”

“Where am I going to go?” Kathy lets out a choked laugh. “I look all gross from crying anyway.”

Keith laughs, standing and moving to the door that connects their adjoining rooms.

When he gets inside, the lights are off. It’s quiet, the air heavy, the bathroom mirror steamed from Lance most likely taking a shower. There are clothes scattered along the floor along with bags of food, opened but discarded, as though Lance had lost his appetite before he could eat anything. His phone is on the dresser next to the TV, still buzzing with new messages from Hunk and Pidge.

Keith’s heart breaks a bit more as he sees Lance, curled up in their bed under a mountain of pillows, the blankets pulled up over his head.

“Lance?”

There’s no response from the bed. Keith takes a step forward.

“Lance, how long were you in the shower for?”

“‘Dunno.”

Okay, a response. He takes another step forward, tentative in his questions.

“Did you eat anything?”

“No.”

Keith counts the number of open chip bags scattered around the room. 7.

“Did you... Lose your appetite?”

A whine comes from under the covers, and Keith stops.

He reaches out to grab Lance’s phone, swiping it open and reading the assault of messages from Hunk and Pidge.

**Hunk**

**> She’s there?**

**> Oh dude.**

**> Oh no.**

**> What’d she say?**

**> What’d you say?**

**> Is Kathy okay?**

**> Did Keith kill her?**

**> Listen, if Keith killed her then we can figure something out.**

**> That was a joke, btw. I really hope Keith didn’t kill her.**

**> Is he okay?**

**> Are you okay?**

**> Lance?**

**> Let me know whenever. I hope everything is okay.**

**> Or as okay as it can be, I guess.**

There are only 3 messages from Pidge.

**Pidge**

**> Do you need me to come down there and take care of her?**

**> I mean it.**

**> I’ll take care of it.**

Keith sends them each a message, turning off Lance’s phone and setting it back on the dresser.

“You told them?”

“Is that bad?”

“No,” Keith says, making it to the edge of the bed. He sits down,the corner of the mattress. It sinks, and Lance seems to curl up a bit more, though Keith can’t be sure without getting rid of all 5 pillows covering him. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to lay with you?”

There’s a pause, before a “yes.”

Keith pulls back the covers, climbing into the bed and laying with Lance underneath the pillows and the blankets pulled over their heads. Lance rolls over to face him, and even in the darkness Keith can tell that he’s been crying.

“It’s okay,” he says, not really knowing what else he can do.

“It’s not,” Lance says, his response nearly immediate.

“It will be.”

“How do you know?”

“She doesn’t want to meet her.”

Lance chokes, and Keith reaches out, finding his face in the dark. He runs his thumb along Lance’s cheekbone, wiping away stray tears.

“She doesn’t?”

“No. It’s going to be okay.”

Lance scoots forward, burying his face in the hollow of Keith’s neck. Keith holds him, running his fingers through his hair, the two of them a mess of tangled limbs and mending hearts, their fortress under the pillows being just enough to keep their future problems away.

“Please don’t leave me.”

The words feel like a punch to the stomach.

“What?”

Lance nearly clings to him, palms spread wide on his shoulder blades as if hoping to keep him from running away.

“Please don’t leave me. Please, Keith. I can’t lose you. Kathy and Liam can’t lose you  _ I can’t lose you _ .”

“Lance, I would never leave you.” He tries not to choke on the words, but fails.

“She left,” Lance whispers, Keith’s hands still at the base of his neck. “She left me alone. Me and Kathy, entirely alone.”

“I know.”

“She can’t just come back now.”

“Of course not.”

“She can’t come and take Kathy away.”

He chokes on a sob, and it’s just enough for Keith’s heart to finally shatter.

“She won’t.”

“But what’s stopping her?”

Keith pulls back a bit, searching through the darkness for Lance’s face.

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s right. You don’t... You don’t have the right. And I can’t do it on my own. What’s stopping her? What if she takes Kathy away?”

Keith sits up just enough for the edges of the blankets to lift, and a bit of sunlight lights up the area of the fortress around them. Lance’s face is broken, desperate and pleading, eyes red and puffy with tear streaks down his face.

Keith lays back down, preferring the darkness.

“Lance, the process isn’t that simple.” He pulls Lance back into his arms. “She can’t just come in and take Kathy. It’s not that easy. And even if she tries, there are lawyers. Judges. People that will side with you because what that woman did isn’t something that can be easily forgiven. You have nothing to worry about-”

“I wish that you had a say.”

“What?”

Lance is quiet for a moment, seeming to formulate his thoughts as best he can.

“I wish... I wish that what she said wasn’t true.” He grips at the front of Keith’s shirt. “I wish that you did have a say. That you had rights. That she was your daughter.”

“She is,” Keith says, though he knows what Lance says is true.

“Of course she is. But I mean... I wish that it was on paper. Official.”

“Then let’s make it official.”

“What?”

“Let’s make it official,” Keith says. “We adopted Liam. He’s ours. Why can’t... Why can’t I adopt Kathy?”

Lance sucks in a breath. “Can you do that?”

“We can see,” Keith says. “At least find a way to make me her legal guardian alongside you. I’m sure it’s able to be done. We just have to look into it, maybe call some people and-”

Lance nearly crushes him, pulling him close and rolling them over until Keith is on his back and Lance is on top of him, his arms around his neck and his legs tangled with Keith’s. He’s crying, peppering kisses along Keith’s face -- his cheeks, his jaw, his forehead, his neck.

“I love you,” he says, over and over and over again. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Keith places his hands on either side of Lance’s face. He looks at him, smiling as Lance smiles, before pulling him down to kiss him.

When they pull apart, Keith is crying too.

“I love you,” he says. “And I’m never going to leave.”


End file.
